Decade Mania

A Toast to the toys and joys, the varmints and vanities that helped us, well, survive

The Eighties were an unforgettable decade ruled by a man with no memory. We're speaking, of course, about Ronald Wilson Reagan, who during the course of his Presidency forgot the names of his Cabinet members, forgot that apartheid persists in South Africa and forgot that—oops!—he facilitated arms sales to the Iranians. But, hey, let's give the guy a break; when you're the host at a decadelong party, you're bound to drop a few details when you wake up in the morning.

And what a party it was—if you were lucky enough to be among the invitees. A lot of us enjoyed great toys, boffo entertainment and nearly ten straight years of economic expansion. Who cares if we needed to borrow a few trillion from the Japanese to pay for it all? We'll put it on our platinum Amex. There were also a few embarrassments, of course; you guys wearing the lamp shades know who you are—the insider traders, the Pentagon profiteers, the sex-crazed evangelists. But what's a little fun without a few casualties?

Now, as we dig out from under the mess, it may look more like Hurricane Ronnie than like a lighthearted revel. To help you sort out the twisted debris of the decade, we've gathered all the heroes and devils, the brilliant and bonehead ideas, the little snafus and the mighty triumphs—all the stuff that made this era so, well, unforgettable. We've even taken the trouble to profile two of our favorites, Ted Turner and Mike Milken, who pretty much typify all that was right and wrong in the Eighties. And for those stricken with fin-de-siècle anxiety, we've got some uncanny predictions for the years ahead, plus a contest to name the Nineties.

So take this decade, please. And remember: Those who forget are doomed to repeat it.

We were helped Through The Decade by

Compact discs

Hard disks

Bustiers

Fax machines

David Letterman's top-ten lists

Jennifer Beals's torn sweat shirt

Condoms

Dove Bars

People We're glad were there

Lech Walesa

Ted Koppel

Steven Jobs

Linda Ellerbee

Corazon Aquino

Mikhail Gorbachev

C. Everett Koop

Akio Morita

Stephen Hawking

Cher

The Best Gadgets

CD players and cellular phones

•

People We wouldn't mind having a Decade without

Jerry Falwell

Pol Pot

Cat Stevens

Peter Ueberroth

Baby Doc

Reverend Donald Wildmon

Al Sharpton

Ed Meese

Griffin O'Neal

Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi

Sure Lign That the Eighties are over

Sex is back.

•

Who Got the Richest

Steven Spielberg

Michael Jackson

Michael Ovitz

Michael Milken

Donald Trump

Madonna

The L.A. Lakers

The Biggest Bitches

Leona Helmsley

Imelda Marcos

Dawn Steel

Joan Collins

Margaret Thatcher

Bess Myerson

Jean Harris

Christina De Lorean

Church Lady

Richard Simmons

Things That started in the Eighties that we can't seem to Stop

Aerobics classes

Postmodernism

Nightmares on Elm Street

Crime docudramas

Rap

Cholesterol

Geraldo

The California Raisins

Leveraged buy-outs

Dan Quayle

Prince

Great Comebacks

Rodney Dangerfield

Tina Turner

Richard Nixon

Tie-dye

Suburbia

Sex with someone you know

Having children

Jerry Garcia

The miniskirt

Elvis

Entertaiment We'd like to forget

Bo Derek's Tarzan

Bo Derek's Bolero

Pia Zadora's The Lonely Lady

Marilyn Chambers' R-rated movies

Morton Downey's TV show

Joan Collins' books

Jackie Collins' books

Rob Lowe's video

Pee-wee Herman

•

Who Had the most Fun

Ronald Reagan

•

Trendy Foods to Forget

Blackened anything

Cold pasta salads

Rare duck

Mesquite cooking

Raspberry vinegar

Edible flowers

Blue food

The sorbet course

Kiwis

Grazing

Designer pizza

Tex-Mex

Who Made the most Trouble

The Ayatollah Khomeini

Captain Joseph Hazelwood

Pete Rose

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker

Baby Jessica

Bernhard Goetz

Ivan Boesky

Willie Horton

Manuel Noriega

William Casey

What we will remember from the Movie

The five-dollar ticket

Steven Spielberg

Spike Lee

"Make my day"

Susan Sarandon and lemons

Debra Winger and the mechanical bull

Kathleen Turner and ice cubes

Laura San Giacomo in heat

Kim Basinger in anything Bette Midler

The good guys: Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Mad Max, Rocky, Rambo, Dirty Harry, RoboCop, Chuck, Conan, Batman and Bond

The bad guys: The Terminator, Lex Luthor, The Joker, Darth Vader, The Alien, Freddie, Jason, Al Pacino in Scarface

The wise guys: Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson

Most unanimous One-Night-Stand Fantasies

Jamie Lee Curtis

Mary Lou Retton (on the unevens)

Fawn Hall

Jodie Foster

Michelle Pfeiffer

Melanie Griffith

Uma Thurman

Jessica Rabbit

Snafus

The B-I

Wedtech

Afghanistan

Kraft Cheese sweepstakes

HUD

O rings

Beta

The ozone

The right to privacy

Deregulation

•

Strange Unions

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver

Phyllis George and CBS

Reverend Moon's mass wedding of 2075

couples in Madison Square Garden

Heather Locklear and Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee

Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson

The airline pilots'

•

Epic Battles

Salman Rushdie and the ayatollah

U.S. and Latin America

Latin America and Latin America

Tiananmen Square

Willard Scott and Bryant Gumbel

James Woods and Sean Young

Nancy Reagan and Donald Regan

Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler

Oprah and her diet